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Pulling clients across the digital divide

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4th Sep 2015
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Getting clients on board when you want to migrate to the cloud is one of the central themes of Practice Excellence Conference’s tech stream. The process is frequently discussed, but what does it mean in reality?

“We’ve had loads of struggles, how long have you got?” said Jon Jenkins of Smart Accountancy Systems. For Jenkins, a Xero and FreeAgent user, the challenge was unrelated to the tech. “The biggest hassles we had we’re generated by ourselves,” he said. “The world is moving very quickly and accountants aren’t natural born marketers. The biggest issue we’ve had is communication with clients, selling that service to them so they understand it.”

Jenkins’s firm is five years old. It has grown up with tech as part of its identity. According to him, his biggest mistake was “becoming too engrossed in the technology”. “What we now understand is the biggest hurdle you’ve got to get over is to not sell the software,” said Jenkins. “Don’t go around just be a software reseller.”

Jenkins warned against becoming ensnared in tech utopianism. The tech may have changed, but the central axiom of client service hasn’t, according to him. In Smart Accountancy’s first year, for instance, Jenkins removed their bookkeeping service believing it to be superfluous in the age of client tech.

But it wasn’t what his clients actually wanted. “We believed that the tech was that great that everyone should just be able to pick it up and just do it,” he explained. “And they can’t, because they’re not bookkeepers, they’re not accountants and, most of the time, it’s not what they want to be spending their time doing.”

So Smart Accountancy reinstated their bookkeeping service and many clients make use of it. “We created the issue for ourselves, believing that clients could simply do what a bookkeeper or an accountant could do.”

But, he reiterated, the tech isn’t what this is about, the tech are just your tools. “What we’ve done of late, once we got over that utopian moment, is ask ‘what is that software is actually going to bring to these people from a service point of view?’,” said Jenkins. “Forget the fact that it’s a nice new shiny toy and people get excited by new things, on a day to day basis what difference is it going to make to them.”

As Kevin McCallum, the head of business development at FreeAgent, pointed out cloud technology already seems so ubiquitous – but that perception is misleading. “Even if you add up the user base of all the big players, you’re still at hundreds of thousands of clients that are using these kinds of technologies,” said McCallum. “It’s not in the millions. We’re still at the beginning of these things, rather than halfway through it.” For the ordinary client, cloud can still be a mystery and a bit scary.

“We’ve not yet hit this mythical tipping point where all of the sudden everyone jumps to using the internet and using the cloud,” said McCallum.

So how to get put your client at ease, then, without wasting your valuable time becoming a marketer? “It’s all about the enthusiasm of the person presenting the idea to them,” said Jenkins. “We’re talking about accountancy, so show them what you’re talking about. I take them out for a coffee, get the receipt and then take a snap of it and show them how I enter it into my system. That gets them interested.”

Despite his cultivated realism, Jenkins does believe that his migration was for the best. The firm went through its client list and disengaged from 16 clients who didn’t suit their new direction. Their client retention was very good, too. Smart Accountancy lost one Italian client because of language incompatibilities.

If you decide to follow his example, warns Jenkins, then learn from his mistakes. “We’ve made a lot of assumptions about what they wanted without actually asking them. That’s not the case anymore, because we speak to them and we do know what they want from us as a service.”

Replies (5)

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By redboam
06th Sep 2015 13:17

Tech - itis?

Disengaging from "clients who didn’t suit .... new direction" is more representative of failure by the one doing the disengaging than the client, regardless of the tech.

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By Sheepy306
06th Sep 2015 22:05

Good to hear
At last, a bit of honesty and practical reality amongst the cloud and excellence hype. It's refreshing to hear that we're all human.
I attended the Cloud Conference this year and unfortunately that 'reality' was a little lacking, both from the speakers (only to be expected) and the panel Q&A''s. I'm hoping that once the hype has settled down a bit then we'll go back to more balanced articles like this one.

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By Tickers
06th Sep 2015 23:26

Finally

I posted about this a few months ago, "the emperors new clothes" and everyone jumped down my throat and said I was living in the past etc.This part in particular "I take them out for a coffee, get the receipt and then take a snap of it and show them how I enter it into my system. That gets them interested.” makes me shudder as this is the reason that clients think they can do their own bookkeeping. I also posted a few days ago about how clients rarely get their bookkeeping right, cloud software has made this worse because more clients think they can do their own accounts but IMO this had made life more difficult for practices because a) their accounts are wrong b) it would be easier to have prepared the accounts from scratch rather than fixing all the mistakes c) clients don't want to pay for bookkeeping.

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By User deleted
07th Sep 2015 09:55

Agree with Tickers ...

... this is the first rational and thought out Cloud post I have seen, rather than the usual tub thumping best thing since sliced bread stuff we normally get fed!

This is what I have been saying:

But it wasn’t what his clients actually wanted. “We believed that the tech was that great that everyone should just be able to pick it up and just do it,” he explained. “And they can’t, because they’re not bookkeepers, they’re not accountants and, most of the time, it’s not what they want to be spending their time doing.”

So Smart Accountancy reinstated their bookkeeping service and many clients make use of it. “We created the issue for ourselves, believing that clients could simply do what a bookkeeper or an accountant could do.”

But, he reiterated, the tech isn’t what this is about, the tech are just your tools

 

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Richard Sergeant
By Richard Sergeant
07th Sep 2015 10:12

Horses for courses

Great article, and as others say, it's great to see a balanced view.

Surely the point is that Smart Accountancy have chosen a clear direction for the firm (no bad thing), understood what they would like to achieve in and from their client base (again no bad thing), worked on the basis that they believed what they were doing was in the best interests of clients (ditto), and admitted that they had to adjust and amend the course when they got some client feedback (which should have been done first, by their own admission). 

Retention levels bares out the client ultimate reaction. 

"The tech may have changed, but the central axiom of client service hasn’t,"

Do the right thing by your clients, and by your own ambitions for your firm. I can't seen the death of bookkeeping looming, but the evolution of service continues.

 

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